Given a sprig of Mullein (the called moly) by Hermes, Odysseus managed to escape the fate of his companions who were turned into swine after eating a feast of cheese and wine laid out for them by the enchanting witch-goddess Circe. The earliest readers of the Odyssey also fashioned the plant’s fibers into lamp wicks. Understandably, they called it the Lamp Plant. A little later, the Romans used torches of Mullein to illuminate their funeral processions.

In his 5 volume De Materia Medica (On Medical Material), the great Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides wrote of the many uses of Mullein which, according to him, is an excellent expectorant when smoked, good for a cough when boiled as tea, and helpful in fighting off streptococcal infections when ingested.

By some fate of providence, De Materia Medica did not disappear during the Dark Ages but stayed in circulation throughout, was translated into Italian, German, Spanish, and French, and served as the basis of much medical knowledge well into the 16th Century.

Not so much with the science, Pliny the Elder linked mullein to witches, but linking the power of plants and the ladies was nothing new nor rare for the author of Naturalis Historia.

From there, Mullein spread across the American continent from coast to coast. Somewhere in the middle it gained one of its more descriptive names, cowboy toilet paper, owing no doubt to the comfort its soft, fuzzy leaves would provide. (Take that, Charmin.)

Excellent examples of this remarkable plant can be found growing along the concrete banks of Newtown Creek, in the temporarily vacant lots of Gowanus, and north of 125th Street in Manhattan.

The Black Locust (Ceratonia siliqua) received its somewhat erroneous nomenclature from William Strachey, a member of the Third Supply mission to Jamestown. Before encountering this piece of local flora however, the mission’s ship, Sea Venture, wrecked on the coast of Bermuda in 1609